Believe in Sherlock Holmes
by Esther Kirkland
Summary: A salute to the fans in honor of the new trailer and John's new blog post. This is us—and this is for us. Enjoy.


**_Believe in Sherlock Holmes_**

You've never met the man.

You've never met either of them, actually. You live a boring life—never been kidnapped, never been involved with international crime syndicates, never uncovered a secret plot to overthrow the government…An exciting day for you is when you put your money in the vending machine and it gives you two candy bars instead of one.

It's a bit pathetic.

You have your friends, of course, and you have a life—you go to school, have a job at a café down the street from the flat you share with your mum and dad and kid brother—and really, it's not too bad. But there was a time when, vicariously, you lived on the edge.

You follow his career like some people follow soaps. From the time you first saw his face on the evening news, something about the man grabbed your attention. Everyone else was focused on his friend, of course—the tall one. The genius. But you were fascinated by the ordinary one.

He writes a blog, which you check daily for updates. Reading his accounts of adventures with his brilliant flatmate, you feel a sort of second-hand thrill of the chase. You never comment—you're not a _stalker_, for crying out loud—but you read each entry until you have it memorized and print out several particularly clever sections to hang on your wall like motivational posters.

Surely, you thought, this is proof that an ordinary person can have an exciting life.

Your mum thinks you're a bit over-involved. _Not normal_, she teases you, and she's not really concerned, but she's just letting you know that she notices your borderline obsession and doesn't want you to go all Bedlam on her. You laugh it off and stop talking about the detective and his blogger quite so much. No one else in your family really cares after all—even your little brother, with his rugby and his friends, has more of a life than you do.

One day, doing some searching online, you discover the fan blogs. Apparently, you're not the only one who cares. Thrilled, you scroll through page after page of posts that detail sightings, encounters, actual cases, and even some photos and short videos—mostly culled from news broadcasts—of the duo, who are quickly becoming international celebrities. You find a site and a few artists who draw clever comic strips and beautiful portraits of your champions. Somehow, they've grown beyond their actual lives to become real-world superheroes.

You begin to doodle more often than you take notes in class: slate-blue eyes and high cheekbones, jumpers and kittens, jam and milk. You know the inside jokes, the memes, the catch phrases and half-sensical gags that float around. And still, you check the blog every day, and there's something inside you that jumps to its feet and pumps its fist in the air every time the blogger posts a new entry.

Then comes the slow avalanche.

It starts simply enough: news stories about the detective start to sound less impressed and more scornful. Veiled insinuations that this man may not be as brilliant as he seems—vaguely worded suggestions that he may be just an ordinary man who's been oddly lucky. Then come the editorials, pointing fingers at supposed holes in the crimes that the detective has solved and asking if a civilian should really have so much influence on the work of the law enforcement community.

The Internet is abuzz with conflicting opinions. Soon the line is solid, dividing those who believe that the detective and his blogger are all that they claim to be, and those who are suggesting that he might be a fraud.

Or not a fraud. Something worse.

The break in at the Tower of London is the biggest news event of the year. Your parents and their friends talk about it over dinner and your friends mimic their parents' opinions during lunch hour. Everyone has a thought: about how security should have been tighter—no-one should have been able to just walk in like that—or about the fellow who did it…And then comes the trial.

You follow it with more interest than you ever have given any other trial. After all, the detective is a star witness! You watch the blog for updates, but it seems the blogger is a bit busy. You think you spot him in the background of one of the news shots, walking into the courthouse. When the verdict comes—"not guilty"—you feel a sinking sensation in your core. When everyone else is exchanging horrified comments about the failure of the justice system, all you can think about is how there must have been something wrong. And that something worse might be coming.

And you're right. Like three strikes of lightning in a row, you are slapped in the face with _Richard Brook: The Shocking Truth,_ and_ Sherlock Holmes Evades Arrest_, and finally—

_Suicide of Fake Genius._

There is nothing to say. You've never met the man—never met either of them—and yet you find yourself weeping into your pillow one night. And the funny thing is, you're not crying for the dead man. You're angry on his behalf, of course, and you believe nothing about this Richard Brook nonsense, but you don't cry for him.

You cry for your blogger. Your hero. The ordinary man you thought might have had an extraordinary life, because if he could, you could too. But both of your hopes are dead and buried and both of you are consigned to a normal, unexciting life.

When the blogger posts his short entry, just days after the detective's death, you stare at it for much longer than it takes to actually read the single, short sentence.

_Believe_, you read over and over again. _Believe_.

What can you believe in? You look around your room, your lonely fortress dedicated to dreaming of bigger things. Your shelf of books and video games and DVDs. Your posters on the walls, with quotes and images of other worlds and other lives. And, hanging from a hook behind your door, your favorite piece of all, purchased with the ironic spirit of your Internet fan-base, and never worn: a deerstalker.

What's to believe in? You're nothing more than a fan—you're not a hero, you're not a champion…You're ordinary. Nothing special.

_Believe_.

Something hardens inside you. The detective may be dead, but that didn't stop the world. Just because one brilliant man died, that doesn't mean that all chance at brilliance is gone from the universe. The actual man may be dead, but the spirit of Sherlock Holmes—the spirit of excitement and adventure and genius and doing things differently than the rest—_that_ lives on

You open your blog and type—with harsh fingers and echoing keystrokes—_I believe in Sherlock Holmes. #SherlockHolmesIsAlive_

And before your eyes, the Internet explodes.

Within hours, hundreds of posts from all over the world bear your hashtag and variations of it. _#BelieveInSherlockHolmes, #SherlockLives, #SherlockHolmesForever_. The mainstream media—the newspapers, the television channels, the late-night jesters—might believe that Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but you know the truth. You all do. You and the hundreds like you.

Overnight, a loosely-connected fan base becomes a full-scale fandom, a word you have to look up the first time you encounter it. Hundreds—maybe thousands strong—you leave your mark on the world everywhere you go. Graffiti marks street corners in bold yellow paint—_Believe in Sherlock Holmes_. Strangers meet your eye in the street and share a silent smile when they see your 221b earrings or your Belstaff coat and blue scarf. Or, of course, your deerstalker. You wear it almost every day now.

Your mum rolls her eyes, because she doesn't understand. She thinks it's some kind of a counter-culture movement, and she lets it slide, because she thinks everyone goes through that "stage" at least once.

You don't bother to correct her.

Then, one day, you meet _him_.

It's not on purpose—you're still not a stalker, though you know there have been a few of your fellow fans who pulled stupid stunts and made you all look bad.

You sit down on the only open seat on the bus, answering a text from your mother without glancing at your seatmate. You hit send, and glance over with a polite smile—which freezes on your face in shock.

It's your blogger.

You look away, quickly. He hasn't noticed you staring yet. Your hands go clammy, and your stomach lurches—you want so badly to say something, but what do you say? You're glad it's one of the few days you failed to wear the deerstalker. What can you say that a hundred other people haven't already said, that he hasn't heard already so many times that he'll just brush you off?

It comes out before you can stop it:

"I still believe in him," you say. Then, your face so hot you can feel the heat of it rising from your cheeks, you look down, and fiddle with your gloves. _How cliché!_ "Sorry," you mutter, "You probably hear that a lot—"

His hand, resting on his knee, is clenching and unclenching. "No, no," he says. "It's fine." You manage to look back up at his face. It's hard and lined, and he's grown a mustache.

He glances over at you, and something that in a previous lifetime might have been a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. His voice is rough, as if it hasn't been used in a while. "You one of those…Sherlockians?"

You grimace. You didn't come up with the name, but you wear it proudly. Most of the time. Right now, coming from the mouth of a man who knew the real Sherlock, who saw him die…it just seems silly. But you nod. "Yeah," you say. Before you can lose your confidence, you add, "But you're the one I really cared about."

He looks a little taken aback, and you backpedal before it can get awkward, the words spilling out of your mouth.

"I just mean that he deserved to be famous. He's the symbol of everything—he's the one we rally around. But you're…you're us. You're the normal bloke who did extraordinary things. It's not exciting that Sherlock Holmes could solve mysteries—he was a genius. Geniuses are supposed to do that. You're the one we care about because…" his eyes are wide, and you falter, suddenly unsure. "Because if you could do things like that, we could too."

You go back to your gloves, cursing your idiocy and wishing you could just melt right into the bus seat.

"That's..." the blogger starts and stops, as if searching for words, words that he hasn't had to use in months.

"Sorry," you mumble.

"No, don't be, I…" he coughs a little bit of a laugh. "I'm just surprised, that's all."

You look up. "We believe in Sherlock because we can't believe in us," you say quietly. "I believe in _you_ because I _want_ to believe in myself."

He looks at you for a long moment, and you see a million thoughts behind his eyes. "I don't know if your believing in me is the right thing," he says at last, as the bus slows to a halt. "Actually…" he shakes his head, his lips pressing together in a tight, rueful smile. "You might be the only one who does."

"I'll be the only one, then," you say. "Because if I believe in you, maybe I can believe in me."

It's a quiet declaration. It's not ground-shaking or revolutionary. But the expression on the blogger's face is one of revelation.

You stand. "This is my stop," you say, wishing it wasn't. Wishing you could ride with this man—with your hero—as far as you could. But you can't. You have your life to live, just as he has his.

He reaches up a hand, and you take it. He shakes it, a firm, solid handshake that sets your bones in order and makes you feel as if you've just been saluted.

"Believe, then," he says. "Believe in Sherlock Holmes, and if you can—believe in me. And I'll believe in you, and maybe…" his voice trails off. You think that this might be the most he's spoken to anyone in days.

"Maybe," you agree quietly.

Without another word, you get off the bus. This won't go on your blog. This is for you alone. This is something to treasure close to your heart, where no one—not your friends, not your fellow fans, not even your mum or dad—gets to see.

He believes in you.

And that's enough.

_#SherlockHolmesIsAlive_


End file.
